Remembering the Morrisburg of yesterday

MORRISBURG — A collective effort has begun to preserve old Morrisburg — in miniature. The model village project proposes to reproduce the village’s streetscapes and buildings sacrificed to the St. Lawrence Seaway mega-project, now coming up on the 60th anniversary of its completion. A pavilion on Morrisburg’s waterfront would house the elaborate to-scale model version of all that once stood in the vicinity, east to west in the greenery of the current parkland and down into the waves of the river to the south.

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John Gleed, a key proponent of the model village project, supplied Nation Valley News with an old detailed map of pre-Seaway Morrisburg, which our newsroom overlaid onto an interactive Google map (as best we could eyeball it). The silhouettes of all those buildings provide a startling contrast between what is, and what was, especially those conspicuously sitting in the water, north of the submerged lock.

With a smartphone and a little imagination, one could walk directly over streets that no longer exist — like Henry and Victoria — and past numerous structures that no longer stand. Take a stroll over to the proposed Morrisburg Model Village pavilion site, indicated by “MMV Here.”

Zoom in for the full effect of the map below. To let the map show your location in real time, hit the GPS symbol (the round crosshairs above the + sign), then click “allow” in the question box that pops up.

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